Manila Boy

i've lived in Manila all my life.
studied exclusively in Manila Schools:
De La Salle, the University of Santo Tomas, and ummm, Ateneo de Manila.
I often drink in Malate, food trip in Binondo, and obsessively hunt for DVDs in Quiapo.
I'm forever wed to this City.
For better or for worse...

Artists in Pampanga province on Thursday started painting human figures on the trunks of more than 1,200 trees set to be cut because they stand in the way of a road expansion.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has allowed the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to cut the trees so the MacArthur Highway could be expanded from Apalit all the way to this city.

As of Saturday, some 100 trees on the Telabastagan segment of the highway here going to Angeles City had been painted with the protest sign—a human body with arms stretched out and around the tree trunk.

But the artists had run out of paint. Members of the Alaya Chamber of the Arts were calling for donations, so artists could paint the protest symbol on more trees, according to Cecile Yumul, a local environmentalist who has asked the DENR and DPWH to stop cutting the trees.

“These trees served as temporary homes to evacuees who were running away from the eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo [in 1991]. The treetops became our guide when the route was dark and [covered] by sand [during the eruptions],” Yumul said.

Concert to save trees

The trees “breathe out” oxygen and serve as buffer against flooding by absorbing rainfall in their canopies and in the soil, which make them all the more important, she said.

“The government built a road on the FVR Megadike. We have the North Luzon Expressway (NLEx) [and] the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTex). With these new highways, the DPWH can leave MacArthur [Highway] alone and spare the trees,” Yumul said.

On Friday night, musical bands, performance artists and Kapampangan singer Ara Mina mounted a concert to gather support for the campaign to save the trees. The petition has so far gathered over 1,000 signatures.

5,442 trees sentenced

The April 22 permit given by Environment Secretary Lito Atienza would cover 5,446 trees in Apalit to San Fernando in Pampanga, and Bamban to Capas and Tarlac City to San Manuel, both in Tarlac.

In a memorandum attached to the permit, Atienza said the tree cutting could not be avoided with the expansion of the MacArthur Highway, also known as the Manila North Road.

At least 1,282 trees will be transferred by earth balling while 4,164 trees will be cut, according to Sofio Quintana, regional technical director for forestry of the DENR.

In San Fernando, at least 82 trees had been cut as of Friday.

Quintana said Atienza gave three conditions before the DPWH could start cutting trees:

The agency must put up billboards informing the public that the DENR had authorized the tree cutting and earth balling.

The DPWH must replace each cut tree with 30 seedlings, all of which will be given to the nursery of the DENR for its reforestation activities. The logs must also be turned over to the DENR.

The DPWH must make sure representatives of the DENR and local governments are present during the tree cutting and earth balling.

120 days

The permit is good for 120 days. When that period lapses, the DPWH will have to get a new permit before it can proceed with its clearing activities, according to Quintana.

He stressed that none of the trees were on the list of endangered species. Most are acacia and fruit trees, he said, citing results of a census.

The Pampanga and Tarlac engineering districts have proceeded slowly with the clearing to comply with the requirements prescribed by the DENR, said Alfredo Tolentino, public works regional director.

While the road widening project’s P700-million budget did not include provisions for the purchase of seedlings, the DPWH was able to scrape together funds from its savings, Tolentino said.

Once a dirt road

The 200-kilometer MacArthur Highway, which starts from the rotunda of Caloocan City to La Union, was originally a dirt road before the American colonial era.

Tolentino said the highway was being improved to provide an alternative route to motorists wanting to save on toll fees at the NLEx and the SCTex.

Tarlac City Mayor Genaro Mendoza said he had not received a letter from the DPWH about the tree cutting.

“They can do it for as long as they comply with the requirements of the DENR and if the project is truly beneficial to the people,” Mendoza said in a phone interview.

The Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry lifted its protest and has since supported the project to improve traffic and hasten progress in the province.

Part of Pampanga heritage

Local environmentalist Yumul continues to oppose the project, saying traffic management is a matter of enforcement.

The DPWH, Land Transportation Office and local governments should ban trucks from using the MacArthur Highway and direct them all to the NLEx and the SCTEx, she said.

“Why should they sacrifice the trees if they fail to do their jobs?” Yumul said in Filipino.

The expansion of the highway removes a safety buffer between the communities and the road, said Lito Ocampo, president of homeowners associations in the city’s 100 subdivisions.

The Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon said the trees should be saved as global warming had become a cause for concern.

The trees are part of Pampanga’s heritage, having been planted under the leadership of Eusebius Julius Halsema when he was district engineer of the province between 1914 and 1916, according to Maria Lourdes Carmela Jade Pangilinan, another green advocate.

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I had chosen “Mike Chanco” simply because I didn’t like the sound of “Henry Omaga Sison-Livingstone.”

That being said, here’s some real, real stuff about me you probably should know before all those news reports and NBI press releases repeat themselves enough to begin sounding like the truth.

Basically, I’ve always been a writer.

Aside from FAD, I also write Skirmisher and The Spinal Tap.

I was a student paper editor back in collegewho abused my little clout to still get gradeseven without attending most of my classes.

Sometime in the 1990s,some people thought I wrote well enough that they sent me to Rome, Italyto help in saving the world from global hunger.

Instead, I spent that jolly good time chasing skirts,specifically that of one cute Japanese girl.

Or stealing silver crucifixes.Later, I would move on to writing some poetry and short stories.

My first few “publishable” verses appeared in the now-defunct Pen and Ink, some occasionally appeared in the Inquirer’s Sunday magazine.

I wrote stories that appeared in, say, the Philippine Graphic and the Philippines Free Press.

My story “The Folly Parade” was included in the University of the Philippines’ Likhaan Anthology in 2001.

In 2006, my story “Blind Spot” landed second place in the Philippines Free Press Annual Literary Awards.

But after that, I sort of stopped writing fiction — I promised myself I should top “Blind Spot” and write something longer, like a novel.

But three years since — now in 2009 — I’m writing this shit blog post instead at the NBI office while waiting for my lunch. There’s dark comedy there somewhere.

As you know, Flesh Asia Daily — the original one I set up on Blogger.com — happened in April 2007.

Back then it was nothing hardcore. Just girls in bikinis. The first posts were mostly pictures and almost no text.

Like most bloggers, it was just a hobby, something you did when you’re not working or not watching grass grow.

Little did I know that it would actually grow big enough to force me to migrate it to its own server, then adopting the WordPress platform.

I called this one FAD 2.0, and it was the version that began to have adult content.

Edison Chen’s scandals happened and I just couldn’t turn away from it.

Nudity eventually became regular fare, along with the usual sex scandals committed by celebrities and comon folks.

By April 2009, I was thinking of shutting it down. There was some real work coming, plus the fact that I’m a couple of years behind writing that promised novel, so I seriously thought FAD 2.0 — the popular adult-oriented blog my little hobby has become — can be shut down, or perhaps sold to someone with bigger balls.

But then came Hayden Kho.

Then came Katrina Halili.

Then came last Friday.

Holy mother of fuck.

Before the NBI entered my lifein such a cinematic primetime news-worthy fashion,the “wildest most action-y” thing I had ever experiencedwas taking a dump at a fast food joint then leaving without flushing it.

Or peeing in the shower.Or telling Christopher Walkenthat his smile frightens the beejesus out of me,via email.

One moment you were wondering how to spendthe rest of the sleepy afternoon,the next moment there was this huge NBI personwith a bad-ass gun screaming at me to sit or else,with all those camera peopleand ABS-CBN’s Maan Macapagal taking it all in.

Nope, we weren’t “manufacturing pornographies,” as some early news reports said.

What I was doing in fact, and this everybody and his cousin failed to mention, was that they caught me doing the “unspeakably horrible” act of playing Guitar fucking Hero.

Worse, not only was I playing Guitar Hero, I was doing it at medium difficulty!

So how pussier could you get? The “Sultan of Sleaze,” who’s so evil he allegedly was the first to upload those Hayden Kho videos, who apparently has “connections” with certain criminal elements, who “manufactured pornographies,” was caught negotiating the guitar riffs of Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out.”

Jesus fucking christ. If I hadn’t been so nervous about having firearms in my mother’s house, I’d have been laughing on the floor laughing like crazy.

Later, in the middle of all the chaos, I saw Maan Macapagal in a corner writing her news report. I saw some “outrageous inaccuracies,” and so felt the need to “correct” her on the spot.

I told her FAD was not getting “20,000 hits a day,” thank you very much, but “60,000 unique visitors” before the sex video mess came out.

But I didn’t correct Maan when she wrote FAD has been getting 1.2 million page views since the scandal emerged.

Of course, it was a grossly inaccurate number, but my “morbid pride” outweighed my “devotion” to accuracy this time, so I let it slide.

I caught a glimpse of my brother glaring at me from a corner, telepathically sending me the message, “What the fuck are you doing, giving interviews?” I shrugged.

I later nudged him and said, “Bro, Maan Macapagal’s cute pala!”

My brother stared at me in disbelief. “We’re in the middle of all this mess, the NBI taking us out, and here you’re still thinking, ‘Maan Macapagal’s cute pala‘? Jesus.”

I said, “Bro, focus. Focus on the more important things.” But then I stopped because he was right and I was being ridiculous.

We were under custody of the NBIat their main office from Friday night to Wednesday evening.

To be fair, we were treated well.I could even say the NBI agents were very friendly and accommodatingand they seemed people I could have been friends withhad we met under different circumstances.

But still, they charged me —not with illegal possession of sheer awesomeness —but with violation of Article 201 of the Revised Penal Code,something about engaging in “obscene publications.”

Personally, I find that incredibly ridiculous,

probably one of the main reasons why Shakespeare inventedthe oft-used question “What the fuck?”

But it is very important to note that this caseis a really new thing —

this is probably the very first time in this countrythat a website (which is not even physically located in the Philippines)was charged with Article 201 violation.

Maybe this is your very own local version of The People Vs. Larry Flynt,only less fun and more gut-wrenching.

This is so new that maybe if we actually lose in this case,it may serve as a basis for future shit. Really murky shit.

People who think an adult-oriented celebrity news siteshould be eliminated are people who are grossly ignorantof online culture, including its attendant freedoms.